Margaret Flowers on Health Care

Full-time advocate for single payer health care system

Margaret Flowers is a Maryland pediatrician and mother of three. After graduating from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1990, Margaret worked first in hospitals in Carroll County and and then in private practice.
In 2007 she stopped practicing medicine to start advocating full-time for a state and federal single payer health care system. "I view the struggle for health care as part of a broader social, racial, economic and environmental justice movement."

Illusion that ObamaCare is a step towards single-payer

Hillary Clinton's recent attack on Sen. Bernie Sanders for his advocacy of single-payer health plan has brought the health care crisis into the spotlight. We are both physicians who have a long history of working on health policy.
While the two Democratic candidates offer proposals that are very different from each other, we see that neither is calling out health care privatization as the fatal flaw in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Clinton argues we can simply expand the Affordable Care Act to achieve universal coverage, which we view as impossible. Sanders is on target with his new Medicare-for-all proposal. However, by preserving the illusion that the ACA is a "step in
the right direction," Sanders misses the point that the current U.S. health care system under the ACA is unique among industrialized nations because it treats health care as a commodity rather than a public good.

Thousands die each year when excluding from adequate care

The Green Party supports single-payer universal health care and preventive care for all. We believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.

Our current health care system lets tens of thousands of people die each year by
excluding them from adequate care, while its exorbitant costs are crippling our economy. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without a national health care system.

Under a universal, comprehensive, national single-payer health care system, the administrative waste of private insurance corporations would be redirected to patient care. In addition, people would gain the peace of mind in knowing that they have
health care they need. No longer would people have to worry about the prospect of financial ruin if they become seriously ill, are laid off their jobs, or are injured in an accident.